The invention relates in general to the field of electro-optical devices including a stack of III-V semiconductor gain materials (e.g., as part of a laser, an optical detector or a semiconductor optical amplifier), as well as silicon photonics chips and methods of fabrication thereof. In particular, the invention is directed to electro-optical devices integrating heat spreaders and/or heat sinks. It notably concerns devices and methods for embedding a heat sink in a silicon photonics chip with an integrated, electrically-pumped laser.
The integration of III-V semiconductor gain materials (e.g., for light sources emitting at datacom and/or telecom wavelengths) in silicon photonics platforms is desired, should it be to obtain high bandwidth optical interconnects.
For instance, a III-V laser source based on lateral current injection (LCI) is particularly attractive, due to its small threshold current and footprint, and the possibility to embed it in the back-end of the line of a CMOS-fabricated chip (which enables a co-integration with other CMOS components). The thinner stack height of LCI lasers may notably allow the integration at smaller nodes than their vertical current injection counterparts. More generally, one may want to integrate several types of III-V stacks (for laser, detection or amplification purposes) in photonics platforms.